


Never Once With Regret

by fourfreedoms



Category: Sky High (2005)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-17
Updated: 2011-07-17
Packaged: 2017-10-21 12:11:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/225029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourfreedoms/pseuds/fourfreedoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Warren wanted was to be left alone, but Will and his friends simply don't have that concept in their dictionaries. Warren should've known this was how it was going to turn out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Once With Regret

Warren had been determined all his life to just get through school and then take off, get the hell out of Maxville, go someplace better—someplace where they didn’t know who his father was and who his father was not. Will, unfortunately (as Warren pretended to see it), barreled straight into his life and blew those plans to bits.

Suddenly they’re having late night study breaks with bottles of old school vanilla cream soda (Mr. Stronghold is like adamantly opposed to A&W or something) and anything fatty they can get their hands on. Will makes Warren cook for him. And he _likes_ doing it. They watch movies and play video games, and sometimes they just stare at the ceiling talking. A lot of the time Warren ribs Will about Layla. Will just lies back on his bed, takes another affected pull on his cream soda like he’s sipping a beer, and turns vaguely pink. Every Damn Time. Then Warren takes advantage of the opportunity to tease him mercilessly about his blushing.

The gang, Ethan, Magenta, Layla, Zack, and Will, take late night drives once Magenta finally gets her license and the keys to the shiny black GTO that Warren appreciates so much more than she does. They go out where it’s deserted and the moon shines down pale upon them, whooping and crying out like they’re woodland creatures roaming the moors. They light illegal firecrackers, although Zack is actually a more interesting light show on most days, and play the classic rock station. On more than one occasion Warren catches Will staring dreamily up at the sky looking faraway. His throat tightens and something feels off, he’s forgotten something, or missed the joke. But he doesn’t know what it is.

They never leave him in peace (haha, best pun ever, not.) at his table. Even when he’s in a foul mood, not altogether an unusual occurrence, they sit and wait it out, ignoring his snapping and dodging around his attempts to engage them in fights. Layla is the best at it and by extension the most infuriating. But Will is like poking a pin in an over-inflated balloon: sure to pop every damn time. And he does. And Warren will never admit to himself that he enjoys seeing Will’s cheeks flush and his eyes burn. He’ll never admit that he relishes the wrestling matches they’ll often find themselves tangled up in: the two of them laughing as Zack and Mags egg them on while Layla and Ethan try desperately to break them apart, never realizing that this is just what Warren and Will do.

Will starts failing Mad Science and suddenly Warren has signed up to be his tutor (clearly a stupid idea, because Will's ineptitude must be sheer recalcitrance, nothing else is possible.) and they spend more time in Will’s room, crouched together over his desk, their sides nearly sealed together like conjoined twins as they work out the hardest problem sets. Will is terrible, he really is, and Warren doesn’t understand how he keeps going back and hasn't lit Will on fire from sheer frustration. But he doesn’t, Warren is never frustrated with Will, annoyed and angered and crazy exasperated, yes, but never frustrated. He just can’t find it in him, especially when Will looks at him with those eyes and smiles that smile at him. The combination of the two seem to inspire endless depths of patience. Jesus, Will doesn't have a third power does he?

When Will and Layla break up, a mutual decision, they both claim, although Warren’s pretty sure Will was the 70 to Layla’s 30 in that agreement, Will shows up on his doorstep in the rain at 1 AM on a Tuesday. Warren doesn’t know what to say, so he says nothing and Will, for once, doesn’t fidget and become disquieted by his silence. When they’ve used up the companionable silence they go up to Warren’s tiny bedroom and hole themselves up in there. They spend the night talking about video games and candy and Jennifer Garner on Warren’s bed: Will leaning against the wall at the foot and Warren sprawled out at the head. He tries not to think about how good it feels in the morning when he wakes up wrapped around Will.

He plays hangman together with Will during First Aid because that class is a huge honking bore and despite especially black moods as the days vary, Will always manages to make him laugh when all of his sentences and words turn out to be from Monty Python. Warren realizes Will does that to him. He just takes all the bad stuff right out of him and maybe that’s why Warren loves him. Yes, loves him. He’ll never say it. Warren doesn’t do love and certainly not for Will, who thinks of everything and everyone but himself and still blushes when they talk about sex.

After school Warren has to accustom himself to being shoved in between friends on the bus, where previously he had always had the bench seat to himself. No longer. They chatter on wildly, about grades and film stars and who’s crushing on whom. As the years progress the conversation matures, but not by much. Layla still raves about Amnesty International and Green Peace to anybody who will listen. She starts dating an older boy with a goatee and a hemp clothing collection. Warren has already run into them lying on the ground outside a building about to go under the wrecking ball when he went out one day for groceries. Will rarely rides with them, mostly he just flies home.

One day when Warren has to stay late for detention, one thing that does stay the same despite Will’s meddlesome presence, Will waits outside the school for him patiently. Warren's instantly grateful, because he’d have had to cop a ride with Principal Powers, which was basically double detention. Will extends an arm and asks, “Would you fly, Warren Peace?” sounding so much like Gandalf or Yoda or some old wise dude that Warren is taken aback. And then the moment is lost and Will is laughing his ass off at Warren’s facial expression. Warren can’t believe how goofy and spastic his friend is.

Before he can muster up some scathing retort he is wrapped in Will’s arms flying out over the houses, the wind flying in his face, and he wonders how anyone can live without this feeling. When Will sets him down in front of his house, they are close together, too close even, Warren notices that Will is almost his height, amazing really as Warren had another growth spurt somewhere around his junior year. Then Will is gone and Warren wishes suddenly that he’d said something, anything, but it’s too late.

Finally it gets to be too much. Will is over at his house on a hot day and they’re lazily tossing a football back and forth. After throwing Warren the ball, Will strips his shirt off and sits down in the shade of the large beech tree that blocks all midday light from Warren’s rear-facing bedroom. Warren sets the ball aside and comes to sit down next to him. Later he won’t be able to tell you what exactly happened, but out of nowhere Will’s lips are over his own. They’re kissing hard, sloppily, with fear and fury but also joy and relief that it finally just happened. Will tastes like cream soda, not a surprise, and his tongue slides against Warren’s own like he’s trying to possess and brand him. Warren will never say it, but everything that he is and has to give is Will’s for the taking.

Things speed up and they find themselves in Warren’s darkened bedroom, hips thrusting against each other, Will’s hands sliding up his shirt, his blunt nails leaving trails of fire on his skin. Warren has to take a moment to pull away and look at Will. His cheeks are that telltale red and his chest heaves, he looks down at Warren like he’s the only person that has ever existed. Then their clothing gets peeled off and they come together in a way that is both perfect and bittersweet. Warren isn’t sure how he ever lived without this feeling either.

When they show up at school on Monday, Layla knows something is different between them. She looks ready to clap Warren on the back, hand him a cigar, and start spouting off ‘deflowering’ jokes. Warren is thankful that she refrains. Every time he looks at Will, he envisions him naked and below him, eyes squeezed shut tight and mouth forming a perfect o of pleasure.

He considers himself very lucky indeed when Will ambushes him in the men’s bathroom during a passing period and they fall back into a stall, hands fisted in clothing and mouths attempting to devour each other. Will jacks Warren off slowly, his face pressed into Warren’s shoulder to stifle his own moans at Warren’s pleasure. Warren can feel Will’s eyelashes fluttering on the sensitive thin skin of throat. He has an intense feeling of vertigo, even as he comes hard, that he will never love anyone else but this often ridiculous teenaged boy pressed against him, constantly driving him mad. But like so many other things, he will never say it.

They graduate from high school, all of them (there were some doubts at times, yes Will, we mean you). Layla has dated three different organic-food-and-earth-saving obsessed dudes, Zack and Mag are still a couple and Ethan is too busy ensuring that Summa Cum Laude is written on his diploma to even consider the opposite sex. Nevertheless Warren and Will are together, despite Will's dad's best efforts, and in that vein they hold it together despite going to different colleges. Warren decides to go to law school upon graduation, not to become, as some who knew about his father surmised, a criminal defense attorney, but to work for the DOJ. Warren never really thought he had it in him, but when he tells Will about the job offer late at night when they're still sweaty from intense bout of sex he can tell that Will knew otherwise.

Will doesn’t follow his parents into Real Estate. Nor does he become a professional wrestler as Mr. Medulla had often despaired he would. Will becomes a music journalist and Warren guesses that all those nights out in the empty fields with the classic rock station playing had an effect on him. Someday, if the law allows, they know they’ll be married, and if they’re also earning a name for themselves as a super duo outstripping the fame and renown that Commander and Jetstream had enjoyed, who’s surprised?

Warren always expected that he’d go away somewhere, never look back, but then Will Stronghold turned his life upside down and plied him with cream soda and video games. Warren looks back, he looks back all the time. But never once with regret.


End file.
